


Draco's Random Touhou Prompt Fills

by DracoOmega



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fill, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 21:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11906529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoOmega/pseuds/DracoOmega
Summary: A collection of short one-shots created from randomly selected characters and prompts.Contents:1. Yamame + Clownpiece, 'Newcomer'2. Yuyuko + Satori, 'Rememberence'3. Patchouli + Lyrica, 'Protector'4. Yamame + Wriggle, 'Sanctuary'





	1. Yamame + Clownpiece, ‘Newcomer’

A blond-haired girl skipped playfully down the winding passageway, damp rock beneath her feet and an unsettling purple light flickering at her side. It was nearly the only light that could be seen and cast strangely undulating shadows upon the walls of the cavern; stalagmites became grasping talons, trickles of water suggested crawling insects and silhouettes of spiderwebs loomed like giant tapestries that threatened to surge with motion at any moment.

She leaned down and picked a small brown object, weathered with time and faintly encrusted with limestone. It was hard to tell if the crack along the back was simply the result of age or of the blow that killed the skull’s original owner.

“I hope it was nice and bloody.” She giggled.

“Oy! Hands off my skull pile.”

One of the shadows behind her resolved into an actual person, brown and yellow and dangling from the ceiling by a thick white tether. “It took a lotta years to arrange ‘em like that and I’d appreciate you not mucking 'em up.”

Clownpiece swept her torch around the chamber and the wavering light settled on skull after skull – large and small, yellowed and as pale as if the flesh had only just rotted away, all suspended in an intricate tableaux of silken cords, like some museum piece.

Her eyes lit up. “Wow, this is pretty awesome, sis.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Yamame grinned amicably at her. “So, you here for the festival?”

“Festival?”

“Down at the Ancient City.” She waved a finger at the fairy. “I mean, with a get-up like that, I just figured you were one of the entertainers. Oh, and don’t worry one bit about being late; down here, the party doesn’t stop until the last oni’s passed out and that’ll be a week yet, at least.”

“An entertainer?” For a moment, the fairy almost looked affronted, but then she pulled herself up to her full (diminuative) height and cackled proudly. “I am no mere juggler.” She brandished her torch through the air and caught the tumbling fire again while missing the irony entirely. “I am Clownpiece, fairy of hell and bearer of the light that drives humans mad!”

“'fraid we don’t get many humans down here these days,” Yamame replied. “But there should still be some pretty great takoyaki down there if you hurry up.”

“Tako… yaki?” That was some kind of food, wasn’t it? She vaguely recalled the other fairies mentioning it, but Gensokyo was full of so many things she’d never encountered in Hell that it was hard to keep them all straight. “Does that have arsenic in it?”

“Nah, just trans fat – s'what makes it taste so good.”

Clownpiece made a note to ask Luna what that actually was and then did another circuit of the room, attempting to guess what each of the many deceased conversation pieces might have actually died from.

She pointed to a particularly brittle one. “I’ll bet that one starved to death!”

“Typhus.”

Its much lumpier neighbour: “Boiled in lead!”

“Close!” Yamame grinned. “That one was from a runaway oil fire, like… 90 years ago, maybe? Someone else got the other corpse.” She watched the fairy flutter around a little while longer, then shook her head. “So, if you didn’t come for the festivities, then what  _are_  you doing down here? I mean, not that you gotta tell me or anything; I’m all for an open door policy with the surface – it’s more fun that way, y'know? It’s just, well, most fairies are creeped out by the bones. 'cept that kasha’s fanclub, I guess.”

“Oh. Right. My mission.” Clownpiece straightened herself up again and gestured in a vain attempt to generate some gravitas. “As official envoy of Current Hell, I’m here to inspect the Former one. Make sure any ongoing tortures are up to code and all that official-sounding business, yadda-yadda.” This was a total lie, of course, but it felt more impressive than saying she was just curious to see how much the place looked like her own home. “A witch told me it was down here somewhere.”

Yamame laughed and shook her head. “You might have missed the torturing by a few decades, I’m afraid. But hey, if ya want a tour of hell, then I can at least show you where to find it. Might even make a new friend or two for yourself down there, and I’m all about that.” She flipped herself rightside-up and landed deftly on the ground, then jerked her thumb down the tunnel to her left. “C'mon. This way.”

Clownpiece nodded. “I’ll make a note of your help-y stuff in my report!” This was actually kinda fun; no wonder there were so many bureaucrats in hell.

“Though y'know, I really  _do_  recommend the takoyaki.”


	2. Yuyuko + Satori, ‘Rememberance’

“Now dear, don’t be shy,” Yuyuko said lightly – though Satori was beginning to suspect she knew no other tone of voice. “You can tell me all about what’s troubling you.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“Oh, nonsense; everyone likes to talk about themselves. Besides, keeping things on your chest is no good at all. You might catch cold and die!”

“I’m already dead,” Satori replied flatly. “Apparently.”

It had come so gently that she’d barely even noticed the transition. She’d simply gone to bed one evening and not woken up again. And yet, on some level, perhaps she’d almost been expecting this.

The Underground had changed. Her pets had grown beyond the need for her to care for them. They’d found lives and families, moved away to the surface or carved out their own little corners of the earth to live in. Utsuho even had her own priesthood, now. People worshipped her as the Savior of the Underground, the Second Sun and the light the ushers in the future. She’d been devoted and benevolent and more than Satori could have ever hoped she would become. She had full confidence that her and Rin would keep the place running better than she ever had herself.

And she’d just felt so tired. When the world kept moving on while you stayed tucked away in your hollow little prison, was there even any point to continuing? On some level, perhaps she’d even welcomed this.

And thus it was extremely vexing to find herself having tea and pastries foisted upon her by a woman who just wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I have a great deal of experience at this, you know,” Yuyuko continued. “Why, I’m sure I’ve been listening to the souls of the departed for at  _least_ ….” She made a show of counting off fingers. “…thirty years? Or was it 3000? Oh well, they’re much the same in the end, really.” She smiled helplessly.

“And I’m sure there’s someone else who’d be thrilled to have the attention. Why don’t you go talk to them instead.”

“Nonsense! You’re an honored guest here; a fellow shepherd of lost souls.” She held out a soft pink manjuu and smiled at her. “You really must try one of these. They’re absolutely delightful.”

Did ghosts even have a sense of taste, Satori wondered. Yuyuko certainly made a good show of pretending, though Satori hadn’t trusted words  _or_  smiles since she was a child – it was a lesson her kind all learned quickly. Hearts were the only things that couldn’t lie, which was what made this encounter particularly bothersome.

Yuyuko’s mind was unlike any she’d ever glanced at – wispy and ephemeral, like shadows dancing in the mist. Often, she said things before she’d appeared to think of them at all and never once let a glimpse of her real self slip past the fog and lightsome smiles; it made for a strangely disconcerting conversation.

“You know,” Yuyuko said, “one normally only shows up looking as much like their living self if they regret something.”

“Everyone regrets things. Everyone.” Her parents, her pets, the oni in their revelry and even those humans who’d long ago come to punish her complacency. “That is not a flaw or a failing; that is  _life_.”

She stared at Yuyuko again, Ghost Princess of the Netherworld for over a thousand years – as impeccably courteous as she was inscrutable. “And what of you, then? If it takes regret to hold this form for a week, then how much must it take to last a millennium? What is  _your_  regret?”

“Regret? Me?” Yuyuko just smiled at her and took another bite of her manjuu. “Why, how could I feel regret when the wisteria are so lovely this morning. Youmu did an absolutely masterful job of the garden this year, wouldn’t you agree?”

Satori tried again to get a sense of what was going on in that impossible mind of Yuyuko’s, but it was just as futile as ever. And so, after a few more moments of pointed silence, she finally accepted the proffered confection and discovered that it tasted rather lovely, after all. Somehow this annoyed her too, for reasons she couldn’t quite understand.

“They’ll mourn you, you know,” Yuyuko said, sipping at her tea. “Though I suppose you ought to know that better than anyone, hmmm?” Her eyes flickered meaningfully towards Satori’s third eye. Someone else might have frowned at that point, but Satori had spent centuries not letting her emotions reach her face. And yet, glancing at the ghost princess’s expression, she felt that perhaps even that wasn’t quite enough this time.

Of course she knew her pets would miss her. How could they not; they loved her, at least as much as anyone ever had. But if she’d been some kind of sorry excuse for a mother to them, then there was always going to come a time when they’d outgrow her. That was just the way of things. They’d mourn her and then they’d move on. They’d live full and rich lives on their own terms, just as she’d always known they would.

That wasn’t what she regretted.

Yuyuko smiled at her again. There was a strange gentleness to it this time – an earnestness, immediately unlike all the wispy pleasantries she’d offered before. Satori felt oddly naked before it – as if  _she_  were the one whose heart was on display to another whose mind she couldn’t quite reach. It was a feeling she’d had just once before – once, when all her centuries of practiced stoicism had failed to keep the tears from her eyes.

“Now,” Yuyuko whispered softly, “why don’t you tell me about your sister.”


	3. Patchouli + Lyrica, ‘Protector’

“A half-tone higher, if you would,” Patchouli said, leafing through a grimoire that looked nearly as large as she was.

“Do I have to?” Lyrica grumbled, watching with disinterest as page after page of arcane sigils flipped past.

“Strictly speaking, no, but per the stipulations of our agreement-”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” The poltergeist pressed a note on her keyboard and a doleful wail echoed through the library, like the dying gasp of a laryngitic leviathan.

Patchouli frowned thoughtfully. “A quarter-tone lower.”

 _This is all your fault, Merlin_ , Lyrica repeated to herself for perhaps the tenth time that afternoon.

Things being Merlin’s fault was nothing new, of course; the girl’s unfettered enthusiasm and shocking lack of forethought should have sent her to an early grave by now if she weren’t already technically dead. No, the unusual part was that  _she_  was the one cleaning up after her.

The day had started off on such a high note, too. The three of them had been at the Scarlet Devil’s new recital hall, doing a dress rehearsal in preparation for a major concert they’d been hired to perform on Hunter’s Moon. Swanky didn’t even  _begin_  to describe the place. Whatever choice words one might reserve about the vampire’s attitude, at least she wasn’t afraid to throw money in the direction of artists who pleased her and that list was apparently going to include them now; they were going to make  _bank_  on this one.

Or at least they were until a particularly spirited trumpet solo from Merlin had turned the delicate crystalline nose of a bust of Remilia Scarlet herself into explosive shrapnel. They’d been on lunch break and Merlin had decided to tour the art galleries and if one had thought she might know better than to blast 120 decibels while standing two feet away from a priceless statuette, then one had never actually met her.

The girl at least had the good grace to look actually alarmed by the outcome and tried to disguise the damage as best as she could – which is to say that even a drunken fairy wouldn’t have been fooled for a second.

Under ordinarily circumstances, Lyrica would have just kept on walking past the doorway and left the cleanup to Lunasa – she was the ‘responsible sister’, after all. But she was also honest to a fault and absolutely certain to begin by confessing everything to Remilia’s face. The mansion’s dungeons had a fearsome reputation that Lyrica was in no hurry to test out on her sister and even if Remilia merely settled for monetary damages, this was undoubtedly more cash than they’d make in a whole year – to say nothing of never being hired again.

No, there was a better solution: blame the disaster on one of the mansion’s many incompetent maids; there were certainly plenty to choose from. And so she’d selflessly applied herself to bribing the only other witness to the disaster into silence. Everyone knew that succubi were hopelessly weak to flirting, after all, and hell – she  _was_  pretty hot.

 _How was_ _ **I**_ _supposed to know she was so bloody loyal?_  Lyrica rolled her eyes and produced another unearthly wail from her keyboard.  _A succubus too selfless to_ _just bang some_ _body and call it a day_ _; what a concept._

And this was how she’d somehow found herself helping said succubus’s mistress to reproduce an unspeakable language that had been lost for tens of thousands of years.

“Are you sure this will even  _do_  anything?” she asked as the last strains of her note faded into the distance.

“It will if you keep quiet and follow my instructions. Now oscillate the second subharmonic again and then repeat the first stanza at double speed.”

Lyrica bit her tongue and did as she was told.

By rights, the chance to jam with so many novel and alien sounds ought to have been right up her alley, but Patchouli’s constant overbearing micromanagement sapped any bit of enjoyment she might have gotten out of the exercise – like some kind of purple-haired vampire of joy.

Patchouli stared at her tuning fork as the eldritch melody echoed through the room. At least she’d  _called_  it a tuning fork, though to Lyrica’s eyes it looked more like some implement of torture; that was definitely a drop of blood quivering on the end of it, at the very least.

“According to the Hajjar Papyrus,” she mumbled – more to herself than anyone else, “The tertiary abjuration is analogous to a 5th circle canticle, which might suggest an upper mordent on the third aethereal rebuke.”

“In words I can understand, please?”

Shaking her head, the magician penned an addition to the sheet music in front of her, then handed it over.

“If this works, Merlin’s off the hook, right?” Lyrica asked as she reviewed the changes.

“Reassembling a silicate matrix based on structural sympathy is elementary earth magic,” Patchouli replied, gesturing absently at the damaged bust at her side. “Remilia will be none the wiser, I assure you.”

“And you, uh… won’t tell Merlin I did this for her, will ya?” She’d hate to be expected to ever do it  _again_ , after all.

Patchouli sighed heavily. “In case I have somehow given you misapprehensions, I have precisely zero interest in interposing myself in your… familial squabbles. How you wish to explain this affair to your sister is your own concern. Now, if you could just stick to the task at hand?”

“Right, right.”

Another hour passed in the most peculiar jam session of Lyrica’s career. By now, her melody resembled nothing less than a parade of mournful alpacas being swallowed by a thundercloud and then strangled by a sequence of kraken. Patchouli insisted they were getting close.

“I hope you appreciate what a rare opportunity you’ve been given here,” she said, and sounded as though she actually believed that might be true.

“Oh. Totally.”

“This magic was thought lost with the continent of Mu – after all, how can one incant a spell in a language which even yamabiko vocal chords cannot emulate? But what need has one to  _speak_  a language when the affinity of a simple poltergeist can summon sounds from beyond memory? Now raise the third trill by one octave and play the whole thing over from the beginning.”

 _'Simple poltergeist’, my butt._  Lyrica grumbled, but she did it anyway.

At first it seemed that nothing in particular was going to happen – and why should it? Unlike her sisters, her music had no supernatural effects of its own – well, if one could even call this 'music’ anymore. Patchouli insisted what she was actually playing was an incantation in a forgotten language – an echo of vocalizations made by inhuman tongues in a time before civilization. And as they reached the fourth stanza, the air in the room had grown so heavy that even Lyrica could not deny that  _something_  was happening. Patchouli’s eyes widened, and for the very first time, Lyrica saw a glimmer of something vaguely approaching genuine excitement in them; it was a little eerie.

And then all at once, every single article of glass within the room disintegrated – light fixtures, ornaments, alchemical retorts that then proceeded to spill their contents all over the floor, and yes – a certain nose-less bust of Remilia Scarlet.

Patchouli blinked.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Lyrica cried, but the magician ignored her and buried her face in the papyrus for several seconds before finally muttering:

“'Render the ice of molten earth unto dust of gold'”

Lyrica stared at the pile of yellow dust beside her feet – and on the table and atop the bookshelves and-

“Sand?”

“Sand.”

Lyrica considered the difficulty of reassembling a statue that was shattered  _this_  comprehensively and laughed nervously. “Um, 'elementary earth magic’, right?”

Patchouli sighed, though this time with the sort of bitterness that made Lyrica instinctively reach for her spellcards. The magician shook her head. “Just… go. You have fulfilled your end of the bargain… adequately. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe there is a translator out there whom I need to murder.”


	4. Yamame + Wriggle, ‘Sanctuary’

Run.

Run.

Just keep on running and don’t look back.

Youkai were creatures of fear – born from it, sustained by it,  _shaped_  by it – but it wasn’t very often that they were  _victims_ of it and even scarcer that they were so panicked they could hardly remember their own name. Then again, it also wasn’t very often that one of them killed a villager with their own two hands, either.

Wriggle was having a very, very bad day.

She stumbled blindly through the winding tunnel, feet seeming to catch on every single spur of jagged rock there was to find. She’d lost all sense of how long she’d been running now – how far she’d come, where she was going, or even what direction she was travelling in.

Away. That was all that mattered.

Her cape snagged on a spiny protrusion from the cavern wall and cut her momentum abruptly short, at first strangling her and then pitching her sideways onto the ground for what had to be the third time at least. She barely felt the impact.

A villager was dead and she was absolutely 100% to blame; youkai simply didn’t  _survive_  doing those kinds of things anymore – at least not small fry like her. If Reimu caught up with her, it was all over; no more cozy little treehouse with its rafters dotted with beetles, no more picket fence covered in honeysuckle for the bees to drink from, no more danmaku or gardening or teaching silk worms to weave patterns together. She’d been making a scarf for Mystia just this morning, in fact. She’d even been considering making a business of it; a youkai could do that sort of thing in this modern world, after all.

But not anymore. There was no going back now. Not that the Underground was much  _less_  frightening, but a kasha she’d met at Myouren Temple a few months back had told her the rumors about the people who lived down there were lies; that the Ancient City welcomed  _everyone_ , from misanthropes to miscreants to the merely misunderstood.

_Even murderers?_  she wondered.

Oh course, no place in Gensokyo was  _truly_  safe from the Hakurei Shrine Maiden, but maybe she wouldn’t bother to look for her down here. Or maybe she’d get just as lost as she was in all these endless twisting passageways that never seemed to-

“Erk.”

This time, it wasn’t her cape that was to blame for the sudden stop. Whatever she’d just run into, she’d done it face-first. It felt… sticky?

“Well, now;  _this_  ain’t somethin’ ya see everyday,” came a voice from somewhere above her.

Wriggle felt torn between terrified silence and a frankly-embarrassing shriek, but somehow managed to fumble out a faint “Who’s there?” instead.

There was no immediate answer, but she felt a shadow descend behind her – silent and menacing and quite a lot larger than she was. She tried to crane her head around to look at it, but it was firmly stuck to whatever springy mesh-like object was blocking the passageway.

A web, she slowly realized. An absolutely colossal spiderweb.

“Heya!”

Wriggle’s heart ran cold even before the words reached her ears. Looming above her was an earth spider, all limbs and eyes and ravenous malice. She wasn’t going to have to wait for Reimu to find her, after all. That spider was going to dig its fangs into her neck, wrap her up, liquify her flesh, and then-

“Hey, thanks for bein’ scared of me and all,” Yamame said cheerfully, “but y'know it doesn’t actually work unless you’re human.”

“Huh?”

She shrugged expressively. “Just doesn’t taste the same, y'know? What brings a surfacer all the way down here, anyhow? What, with the so-called prohibition and all.” She asked the question so casually it could be mistaken for an inquiry about the weather. For a moment, Wriggle wasn’t even sure how to respond.

“I… um….” The firefly paused, fidgeted, and succeeded mostly in getting her left arm even more stuck in place than it already was. The earth spider’s grin looked surprisingly cordial, but maybe she was just playing with her food. No spider could ever have an insect’s best interests at heart. …could they?

Well, it didn’t seem to matter very much at this point, anyway.

“I did something terrible,” she said eventually.

Yamame grinned at her. “Do tell!”

“No, I- I….  _really_  terrible.”

“Heard ya the first time.” Though she didn’t sound particularly annoyed by it.

Wriggle hesitated again. Somehow it was hard to admit it out loud, even to another youkai – spider or no spider. Maybe if she just didn’t  _say_  it, then it would all go away somehow.

“I killed a villager.”

“Wow, a little thing like you?”

“Hey, don’t look down on bugs!”

She’d spat the words on reflex and immediately regretted them as soon as she remembered the perilousness of her situation. The only insects nearby were a couple of cave crickets and a small flatworm – hardly enough to dissuade an earth spider, no matter how willing they might be to sacrifice their lives for her. Did the youkai down here even respect spellcard rules?

But Yamame just laughed. “Damn straight – us creepy-crawlies gotta stick together, hey?”

“I thought argiope  _ate_  fireflies,” Wriggle said with a frown.

“Yeah, well they don’t sing karaoke either and you oughtta hear me on open mic night.” She grinned shamelessly. Wriggle just blinked. “Anyway, you were saying?”

“Oh. Right.” The firefly youkai took a deep breath, somehow feeling calmer while trapped in a spider’s web than she had for hours – exhaustion, perhaps? “It was the son of one of the cloth merchants in the village,” she began. “I’d seen him once or twice before while checking up on the silkworms his father keeps. He was out on a… picnic, I guess? Or just wandering around looking to cause trouble – it was out past the farms on the outside of the village walls, anyway.” She paused. “I saw him… pulling the wings off dragonflies.” Even in her exhaustion, the memory still seethed a little.

“So you killed ‘em.”

“No!” Wriggle waved her arms in dismay – or rather set the web to undulating like a runaway waterbed while her arms remained fixed in place. “I just… I just told a couple bees to go sting him a little. You know, to make him stop it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He was allergic.” Wriggle hung her head in shame. “Really,  _really_  allergic.”

She’d flown into a panic the moment the boy’s face had turned blue, but she couldn’t just barrel through the village undisguised to look for a doctor and Eientei was so far away and she always got lost every time she went looking for it and before she’d even figured out what she  _could_  do, he’d stopped breathing altogether.

“So yer running away from the surface then, hey?”

Wriggle nodded faintly.

“Well, if anyone asks  _me_ , he took a swing at a beehive and it’s his own damn fault.”

“….really?”

“Really.” Yamame grinned. “Far as I’m concerned, the guy had it comin’. Bet he didn’t even wanna  _eat_  those dragonflies,” she grumbled. “Humans have a bloody strange sense of taste, let me tell you.”

Wriggle paused; for the first time all day, she felt the faintest hint of a smile tease the corner of her mouth. Maybe that kasha had been right, after all; they really  _weren’t_  all bad people down here. They couldn’t be, not if a spider was willing to help a fly – even a little. “Do you think there’s really a place for me in the Ancient City?”

“You like booze?”

“…not particularly.”

“Well, we’ll worry about that latter.” Yamame landed on the ground with a thump and then set to peeling the webbing off of Wriggle’s back. “Let’s get you out of my bat-catcher and I’ll show you around the place. Y'know, I bet Ari could use another hand with those silkworms of hers….”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone's curious, the list of possible prompt topics these were rolled from can be found [here](http://draco-omega.tumblr.com/post/142876676875/fiction-prompts).


End file.
